


Yellowed Lace and Pink Candy Floss

by greeneyes_softsighs



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 04:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2718407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeneyes_softsighs/pseuds/greeneyes_softsighs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Father Maxwell takes them to the circus every year. 2+3</p>
<p>A vignette inspired by Clara Barton's picture prompt: cotton candy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yellowed Lace and Pink Candy Floss

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song [Mon Menège à Moi by Edith Piaf](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akRLH3ibGdA).

Once a year, just for three days, the circus came to their county. The tents and booths were set up in the abandoned soybean fields outside town. They seemed to appear out of nothing and disappear just as quickly. Father Maxwell brought them to the circus when it came. He drove them in his old Buick Roadmaster past yellowed fields of corn and wheat and soybeans to get there. The red and white striped tents grew larger as the Roadmaster kicked up dust and angled toward them.

Father Maxwell set up a splintered wooden milk crate just outside the arcade and preached about Our Lord and Savior to the people entering while Duo and his brothers and sisters, dressed in their hand-made black dresses and slacks and shirts, handed out pamphlets. Duo claimed the best spot. He stood as close to the entrance as he was allowed, where he could see patrons playing games for prizes and hear the sideshow barkers and calliope music.

Father Maxwell told them the games were wicked. They were rigged so you would never win. It was sinful to play them, sinful to let the heathens steal your hard earned money. It was always better to give to the Church. They looked fun, anyway, Duo had decided. Throwing hoops to catch on bottles, squirting water into a target until a balloon burst, knocking over stacks of tin cans with a baseball -- he wouldn't mind passing up the ugly dolls and stuffed animals if he could get a chance to play. Wouldn't mind sinning a little.

The best part about his spot, though, was the view he had of the candy floss stall. It was smaller than the rest. Squeezed between a hoop and bottle game and the greasy man who Guessed-Your-Weight-Or-Your-Money-Back. Duo could watch the stall boy spin sugar all day long. Watch him pour the mix, and twirl the paper cone, exchange money for goods and repeat. It was mesmerizing to see something appear from nothing. Hypnotizing.

The boy waved at him, once. Just a little waggle of his fingertips when the stall manager wasn't looking. A secret smile. Duo's face turned three shades of red. He returned that little smile ten fold, grinning ear to ear, and the stall boy mouthed something to him. He couldn’t read lips though. All he could do was nod and grin like a loon. Then, Father Maxwell clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder and pulled him away, back to the Buick to wait for Solo and the older boys to return with discarded pamphlets they'd collected from inside the circus thoroughfare. The church wasn’t about to waste money on more pamphlets when these were perfectly fine.

Just before dusk the older boys returned with their arms full and wide grins on their faces. They dumped the used pamphlets into the milk crate, shoved it and themselves back into the Buick, and Father Maxwell drove them home.

"Why are you two so happy?" Duo asked Solo once they were back at the church. The older boys had talked cryptically between each other the whole ride home, grinning and elbowing and laughing. Duo wanted in.

"You're too young, Duo. Still a boy," Solo said, mocking Father Maxwell's rhetoric. "You wouldn't understand."

"I'm almost thirteen, Solo. Shut the hell up!" Duo shouted, using one of the most effective curse words he knew. Solo just laughed at him and ruffled his bangs.

"Then ask Father Maxwell if you can collect pamphlets with us tomorrow," Solo dared him.

So he did. Of course, Father Maxwell said no, lectured him about the sin of giving in to temptation, and made him go out back to choose a switch. He was kept home with sore legs and buttocks the next day and made to help Sister Helen in the kitchen as extra punishment. It was worse than passing out the pamphlets.

When Fr. Maxwell returned that afternoon, Duo hunted down Solo to get revenge. Instead, Solo told him that he and some other boys were planning to sneak out and, since Duo was almost thirteen anyway, he could tag along. Solo wasn’t that big of a jerk, Duo decided. He agreed to go and would get revenge another time. That night, after dinner and evening vespers, Duo snuck down with the other older boys to the barn where the Buick was parked. Solo drove them to the circus.

They jumped part of the fence surrounding the arcade and slipped through the crowd to a tent in the far corner of the thoroughfare. A man stood outside dressed in barker attire, and he said nothing as Solo and the other boys paid their dues and entered. Duo dropped his coins into the money box and tried to avoid looking at the sly man’s sidelong gaze and smirk. 

Inside, the tent was full of men. It had a peculiar, pungent smell like stale smoke and alcohol and something else that Duo didn’t recognize. The front seats were already crowded, so Solo and the others stood off to the side as close as they could get. Duo watched the stage curiously.

A spotlight suddenly illuminated the makeshift curtain. The crowd stilled, grew quiet though restless. Duo glanced around at the faces of the men in the audience, and at Solo and the other older boys beside him. Their shoulders were tense with anticipation. They bared their teeth in a mockery of a grin and turned to whisper, or give each other meaningful looks that Duo found perplexing. 

Finally, a woman in a trench coat appeared from behind the ragged piece of cloth, and the silence was broken by jeers and catcalls and rough, ugly voices shouting obscenities. Someone threw a beer bottle, which burst against the back corner of the stage. Duo was amazed she didn’t turn tail and run. Instead, the lady very calmly and gracefully strutted over to a record player and placed the needle into the grooves.

A woman’s voice floated out of the speakers. An old voice, in a romantic language Duo thought might be some kind of European, sang as the performer let the trench coat slide over her shoulders onto the floor. Duo gaped as she slowly revealed pale flesh hidden under the yellowed silk and rhinestones of her skimpy outfit. The men heckled and shout, only getting louder with each piece of shed clothing. They started to drown out the music as she wiggled and walked across the stage, thumbs tugging at the strings barely holding her panties in place. The tassells on her breasts swayed with each step, and the crowd surged out of their seats toward the stage when she came closer to the edge. They grabbed at her ankles, but she ignored them and kept dancing like a delicate wind up toy. Duo edged toward the exit after Solo and the other boys joined in the mob grabbing for the woman on stage. The smell of the room was getting to him, and the shouts only grew more and more aggressive, frightening, confusing. He slipped under the bottom of the tent and ran into the alley by the fence.

The air outside was cold and stung his lungs as he gulped it. Duo reached up and felt his face. His cheeks were flushed and he felt feverish.

“You into that kinda thing?” someone asked. Duo looked up into a fall of brown hair and one angry green eye.

“Huh?” Duo was confused, still shaken by the tense, wild and unfamiliar energy from the skin show. The green-eyed boy inclined his head toward the unmarked tent and curled his hands into fists.

“No! No… I just wanted to see what it’s about, you know,” Duo replied hastily, somehow, because he cared what this strange boy thought of him. “I wasn’t expecting all that.” The anger in the other boy’s expression softened slowly, though there was still judgement in his silence. Duo felt hot all over. Embarrased. Ashamed. It took him a moment to settle down.

“What’s your name?” Duo asked the other boy. He recognized him from the cotton candy stall. The memory of that little smile and the wave made him grin.

“Trowa. Yours?”

“I’m Duo.” Trowa nodded and stepped closer. He wedged his fingers into Duo’s hand and tugged him along, weaving behind the various tents. Duo followed silently, curious. The dirt path they walked was dimly illuminated by the arcade, and littered with trash, so Duo focused his gaze on the dark, mottled marks that stood out against Trowa’s pale skin, peeking from under the collar of his turtleneck. He was a little taller than Duo. Skinnier, too, if that was possible. And they had to be near the same age, even though Trowa walked without any of the gangly awkwardness of other young boys his height.

Trowa turned down a tight alley between booths and they popped out onto the thoroughfare. He released Duo’s hand once they were under the bright lights, and walked to the side of a stall. Duo looked around to get his bearings. He could hear the barkers distantly, and to their right the slimy man who guessed your weight called out to the crowd passing him. Trowa returned with two pink clouds of spun sugar balanced on paper cones.

“Here,” Trowa offered one of the pink treats to Duo while pinching a piece off his own with his teeth. It melted against his lips and he licked it off with a smile. Duo stared at treat, not sure what to do. He wasn’t used to getting presents like this. In fact, Father Maxwell often instructed against taking things from strangers. But Trowa was smiling now, with no trace of the anger Duo had seen before, and the smell of pink sugar was tempting -- especially after the sour stench of that tent. He took it from the boy with a muttered thank you.

They walked down the arcade with their cotton candy. Trowa stopped by the games to convince Duo to play at least one. They didn’t have to pay, because everyone knew the green-eyed boy, so Duo agreed to one of the rifle games. Trowa was a good shot, and Duo had never held a gun before, so by the end of their turn he managed to win one game. His prize was a small, lopsided plastic clown. Trowa laughed at his look of disappointment.

“Do you want it?” Duo asked as Trowa led him back behind the tents, away from the crowds and bright, hot lights.

“No, I hate those things,” Trowa said softly. “They’re creepy.”

“You afraid of clowns or something?” Duo teased, waving the misshapen toy in front of Trowa’s face. Trowa stopped walking to give him a dour look. He leaned against the side of a small metal trailer and sucked his fingers, still sticky from the candy floss. Duo noticed that Trowa had blue and purple marks on his wrists to match the blotches on his neck, too, and when the other boy caught him looking he stuck his arms behind his back quickly.

“I’m not afraid of nothing,” Trowa answered him after a stretch. He was looking at the ground when he spoke, and then up at the peaks of the tent beside them. It was the biggest tent, with three pointed spires from which a series of pennants streamed in the cold wind. Duo sucked in a breath and squeezed the soft plastic dolly in his hand. From behind the nylon and plastic wall he heard people cheering. He could smell strong evidence of the animals they used in the show, too.

“Then, I dare you to take me to the lions,” Duo said, forcing a grin. The boy met his challenge with a weak smile hidden behind his brown hair.

“Okay,” he replied. Duo dropped the smudged plastic clown onto the packed dirt of the path and Trowa grabbed his hand again. They walked around the big tent, to a break in the ramshackle fencing that surrounded the circus grounds, then out into the field beyond. There were a few big old pickup trucks hooked up to empty trailers parked in the dry field. A collection of cars and other run-down looking mobile homes were scattered as well. It was a strange little village cobbled together of mismatched things all dirty or falling apart or both. A laundry line, heavy with clothing, hung from one mobile home to another, and Trowa ducked beneath a pair of bloomers to get to the other side.

The lions were kept in a very small cage outside the ramshackle village. They were bigger than Duo anticipated, and their yellow eyes shown iridescent in the night as though lit from within. Trowa stopped a few feet from them and gripped Duo’s hand tightly, keeping him back. One of the lions turned its head to them slowly. His mane was matted and flat, his mouth open and panting accompanied by strange, harsh rasps. Like a smoker’s laugh.

“Pretty neat,” Duo murmured. “Can I pet it?”

“No, don’t be stupid,” Trowa scoffed. “It’ll bite you. It’s bitten everyone.”

“Has it bitten you?”

“No, but--”

“So... you’re too scared to pet it?” Duo asked, smirking at Trowa’s blank face half-hidden by his hair and the darkness. Trowa let go of his hand and walked toward the cage without another word. The second lion was watching now, lips twitching silently as the green-eyed boy sidled up to the bars. It let out a low moan that raised the hairs on the back of Duo’s neck and arms. Trowa reached out his hand and gingerly stuck it through the bars of the cage, palm up, fingers spread slightly. His shirt sleeve caught on the rough metal and tugged back. The ghostly, half-healed marks of thick blue and purple and yellow fingers stood out stark on his skinny arm.

“Trowa!” A woman’s shrill voice cut through the air. Trowa tugged his arm back suddenly and tripped, falling onto dry grass and hard earth. Both lions lunged and snarled after him, pawing at the air where he’d stood only seconds before, and Duo gave out a startled yelp. Their fangs were broken and teeth filed flat. Their paws declawed. He turned to see a woman angrily striding over to them. She was barefoot in a trench coat, and when she came closer Duo noticed that beneath that trench coat she was nearly nude. One tassel was still attached to her right breast while the other was clutched in her hand. Duo stared only because he’d never seen a woman’s nipple before. 

“What are you doing, boy? Go on and get your chores finished up,” the woman scolded Trowa angrily. He scrambled to his feet and jogged off, turning to give Duo an apologetic look before disappearing into the shadows of the strange circus commune. The woman turned on Duo with a glare once Trowa was out of sight. “What the hell are you lookin’ at? Get outta here, ya dumb hick. This ain’t no place for a free show! Git!” Duo reacted too sluggishly and had to fend off half-hearted slaps as he ran off in the direction of the circus lights. He kept running until he found Solo and the other boys, and fended off more chummy punches and jeers from them as the group left the arcade for the car.

“Hell, Duo, you missed the best part,” Solo laughed. He waved a pair of silk and rhinestone panties in the air and Duo blushed. He hadn’t noticed if that woman was wearing any when she chased him off. “Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere,” Duo answered, thinking of his night with the boy from the cotton candy stall. 

“Shit, you’re still just a kid. You better not tattle on us to Father Maxwell,” Solo said while twirling the panties around his index finger. His tone was a threat, but Duo took it as more of an insult. Only babies tattled, and even if he did tell it would only get him in trouble, too.

When they got back to the church it was past midnight. The boys shimmied up the tree next to their window, back into the dormitory, and went to bed. Duo saw Solo tuck the panties under his pillow, and he wished suddenly that he’d kept that ugly kewpie doll. It reminded him of that green-eyed boy’s laugh, pink candy floss, and the yellow eyes of lions.


End file.
